prose

  • Sunsets in Hell

    Sunsets in Hell

    The sinking feeling of depression creeps up on me again. It feels like a lead weight I’ve suddenly found myself encumbered with. Like an anchor, I toss it overboard. It swiftly sinks through the depths of the cold darkness and I along with it, yet I remain in the vessel from which it was dropped.

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  • Be Inspired

    Be Inspired

    On the days I’m feeling uninspired I look at things more closely. I listen more intently. I feel more deeply. Something will strike a cord in me, and it may only be a slight vibration, but if I allow it to grow, it will consume me. Through the lens of my camera everything seems more

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  • The Reluctant Writer

    The Reluctant Writer

    There was always something: some event, some comment, some form of self-doubt, that left me with conflicted feelings about my writing. Sometimes it was the pressure to publish from someone who had read my work. Sometimes it was my inability to believe anything I wrote was any good.  Sometimes it was the comments I received

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  • Another Day in Paradise

    Another Day in Paradise

    Wind chimes danced and sang in the warm breeze as heartstrings broke. The sunlight slipped into the shadowed corners exposing the ghosts. They ran into the shade of the trees whose leaves whispered ancient secrets.  The inviting body of water just off the back deck soothed all the pains of the day as it faded away,

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  • Erased by the Darkness

    Erased by the Darkness

    Not long after midnight, I went outdoors. The night sky was filled with stars, the wind was brisk, and the wind chimes sang in the night air. I felt more peace in those moments than I had all day. There was nothing in the darkness that frightened me. There was nothing under that black, glittering

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  • Edgar

    Edgar

    The red berries on the bush in the backyard were the only color that bleak morning in November. My eyes sat fixated on their crimson coats, for everything else seemed as dead as I felt. I sipped my coffee, eyes transfixed, mind blank, body breathing yet dead inside. My skin appeared as grey as the sky

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  • Writing Close to the Bone

    Writing close to the bone is easy – sharing it is another story. There is something about allowing other people to read your innermost thoughts. I liken it to being naked in the town square. People are staring, some pointing, others snickering. The feeling can be exquisitely uncomfortable, but like anything new the novelty wears

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  • There’s Bats in the Belfry 

    There are no happy mediums, not for me. It’s feast or famine, full throttle or slow crawl—it is life in extremes, and it’s the nature of the bats. Bipolar Disorder, Manic Depressive, Mentally Ill—none of these labels evoke anything positive. Nevertheless, these are the labels in which I live under. I prefer far less psychiatric

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  • Sad To the Bone

    Sad To the Bone

    Happiness had never really existed. Situations and circumstances masqueraded as such, but genuine happiness had escaped me. If I had one excuse why it had, I had a thousand, but none of that seemed to matter anymore. Excuses were no longer acceptable. The time had come to face the facts and remove the mask. Happiness

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  • Touched with Fire

    Touched with Fire

    There are those of us, touched with fire; a fire that rageswithin, threatening to destroy the very mind in which itresides. It leaves behind a chaotic state of a whirling madnesswhich I have become the master of manipulating. There are scars that will never fade, and memories thatwill never free me. Then there is me,

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  • Dead Butterflies

    Dead Butterflies

    Lifeless butterflies, dead and dry, rest in their perpetual state upon a lovely journal that has yet to have its virgin pages marked with the scratching of a barely legible hand. Dead yet beautiful are the butterflies. Promising but empty is the journal. Thoughts can be as fragile as the wings of a dead and

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  • Good Enough

    Good Enough

    The curse of perfectionism laid its heavy hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, counting all the ways I wasn’t good enough. I thought I’d learned not to listen to those whispers, but it appeared I was falling susceptible to them once again. I waited for the feeling to pass. A day or

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